Tuesday, April 26, 2011

Needs More Banjo

As I was driving home from a friend's place the other night, my mp3 player – in shuffle mode – gave me two consecutive songs featuring banjo: Electrolite by REM, and White Blank Page by Mumford & Sons, and it reminded me of just how much I enjoy the use of that particular instrument.

I'm not sure where I first heard a song with banjo, but there would have been a few songs floating around while I was young.

Tuesday, April 19, 2011

Frankenstein & Sucker Punch

I visited the Palace cinema twice in two days (Sunday and Monday) for two somewhat different kinds of entertainment, despite them being broadcast in essentially the same medium.

Frankenstein

Not a film – a filmed version of a play; England's National Theatre have done a series of these over the last few years – I saw their Hamlet (which was brilliant) a few months back – and they seem to be successful enough to be continuing with them.

This particular production was a stage adaptation directed by Danny Boyle (director of one of my all-time favourite films, Trainspotting, and winner of the Best Director Oscar for Slumdog Millionaire) and starring Johnny Lee Miller (also from Trainspotting) and Benedict Cumberbatch, who plays Sherlock Holmes in the brilliant BBC tv series, Sherlock. One of the more unusual aspects of the production was that Cumberbatch and Miller would alternate the roles of Frankenstein1 and the creature on different nights.

Tuesday, April 12, 2011

The Scottish Audition

I, like most actors, have a theatrical wishlist1. On that list are modern plays shows like Noises Off, Arcadia and A Few Good Men; and there are, of course, more than a few Shakespeares. I've already done four – A Midsummer Night's Dream, The Taming of the Shrew, Much Ado About Nothing and (most recently) The Tempest. But that still leaves a few2, and amongst those at the top of the list is Macbeth.

What I've also wanted to do for quite a few years is work with the University of Adelaide Theatre Guild (henceforth known as 'the guild' for short), whose shows I've been seeing for almost as long as I've been living here, including Twelfth Night, The Underpants, A Streetcar Named Desire, Antony & Cleopatra, A Midsummer Night's Dream, Influence, Richard II, The Importance of Being Earnest and The Real Inspector Hound.